Olympic Progress

The plan to bring socks along to Florida for relaxed vacation knitting crashed the moment I realized that knitting with five DPNs and a cable needle freaks me out. The socks--I'm still working on the first one and am stuck somewhere between cuff and heel--had to stay behind; instead I brought the Olympic sweater. Many, many hours of unexpected air travel later (very long story. Suffice to say I made surprise stops in Indianapolis, Detroit, and Baltimore. I had booked non-stop flights, by the way):

I'm almost done! And if it weren't for not-so-wonderful Lang Yarns instructions I would have been done long before hitting Baltimore on my so-called non-stop flight home (can you tell I'm not quite over the flight complications?).

In theory this sweater is a piece o' cake. However, I had to redo the sleeves and am looking at doing the left sleeve again. My beef with the instructions? Well, if it reads "increase every 6th row," I don't increase for the first five rows, then work an increase, and then repeat. Once I finished the first sleeve I realized that those first five rows that I didn't increase had added an unwanted three centimeters to the piece, and that clearly the instructions should have read: "increase every 6th row, starting with an increase row." (This wouldn't have been a problem had it not been for yarn shortage: I didn't mind extra-long sleeve, but I was running out of yarn rapidly, and every yard counted). The other obstacle, as I learned once I had finished both sleeves, was the position of a different set of increases:

The instructions ask for two increases in every row at one side of the sleeve, which results in what you can see on the right: a sleeve with a triangle sticking out. This looked odd to me, but I made a second matching sleeve regardless, thinking that this might be some cool-looking futuristic elbow cap. I figured I better finish the whole sweater to see what it looks like when everything comes together. Well, the sleeve design didn't come together at all, and I redid the sleeve increases by increasing every 3rd (then 4th and 5th) stitch over three rows, with plain rows in between. The result is on the left. When worn, it looks much better this way.

Here's my last complaint: the instructions don't state yarn requirements correctly. Relying on the instructions I got eleven balls of Piora (the fuzzy stuff) and four of the merino DK weight yarn (for the cuffs). I ran out of Piora completely before finishing the cowl, which is four centimeters short. The bottom of the sweater is worse: it's seven centimeters short! The latter problem is easy to fix, since fortunately I used only 40% of the merino and have more than two balls left. I'm using the merino to add an edge to the sweater, and no one will be able to tell the difference. I'm hoping that those extra balls of merino will knit up to seven centimeters of ribbing and thus make up for the missing Piora. But isn't this irritating: to run out of one yarn but have a lot extra of the other?

Anyway. I can see the finish line. I just need to complete the ribbing, redo the sleeve, weave in all the ends--and show you a photo of the FO!

In a later post I'll share some Florida photos... for now I'll leave you with just one: